


early in the morning (laughing at the sun)

by empathieves



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Autistic Character, Domestic Fluff, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-06 23:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10347432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empathieves/pseuds/empathieves
Summary: Akaashi spends most waking moments wondering how they managed to find three partners who understand them and love them all the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by Nikki for Bear as a birthday present! Happy birthday Bear!

Akaashi always knows when Bokuto is having a downswing. It’s not like it’s hard to tell, of course, but they know in a way that’s unusual even in their household; they know, most of the time, how to fix it before it even properly gets going. They can’t fix it every time, and those times usually end up with Bokuto crying on the bed, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking, Kuroo behind him and rocking with him, Kenma making tea for them quietly in the kitchen, Akaashi telling him the things he needs to hear. Whatever Bokuto has isn’t always something Akaashi can solve, but they don’t mind. Bokuto doesn’t need fixing. He just needs to know he’s loved.

This time isn’t one of those times.

Bokuto walks in the door of their apartment, and Akaashi immediately notes the body language. They’ve learnt, over the years, that body language is the best indicator of someone’s mood. They can’t always read tone, and they definitely can’t always read faces, but body language is easy because it’s usually the same for everyone. Bokuto’s shoulders are slumped, there’s a crease in between his eyes, and he’s hunched, making himself smaller.

“Koutarou,” they say, and they invest the little bit of energy to make their voice _sound_ affectionate, because tone makes the difference when Bokuto is like this. “Do you want to watch something tonight? Kuroo is making dinner.”

By ‘Kuroo is making dinner’ they mean that dinner is going to be something delicious that they can eat with their hands in front of the TV, even if Kenma will use chopsticks and Akaashi will wipe their hands on a napkin after every bite.

“Aaaah, really? I wasn’t really feeling that hungry –“ he says, but his shoulders are already lifting and the crease has vanished.

“Bokuto, I will feed you myself!” Kuroo calls from the kitchen, in a chiding tone that manages to skirt away from sounding harsh, and Akaashi is always so grateful to Kuroo for these moments. It’s easy to forget that Kuroo had his own team of people that he managed in high school, and that he’s as well-versed in handling situations like this as Akaashi is. Easy to forget, until he brings Kenma out of a slump with a few casual sentences, or gets Bokuto to eat with one shout from the kitchen, more joyous promise than threat.

Akaashi looks at Bokuto, makes eye contact, smiles. Bokuto sighs, shrugs one shoulder, and then walks over to join Akaashi where they’re sitting on the couch, legs crossed and with a fluffy blanket on their lap. Bokuto wriggles around for a few minutes, trying to get comfortable, and then gives up and lies down, stretching and shifting until his head’s almost in Akaashi’s lap, and Akaashi uncrosses their legs and lifts their arms obligingly, letting Bokuto rest his head on their thighs.

One hand comes down to rest in Bokuto’s hair, stroking it like they would a cat, and the other picks up the book they had been reading, well-used to turning the pages one handed considering how often they ended up with someone’s head in their lap. They’d asked, once, and Kuroo had just looked at them. _Your lap’s comfortable, Akaashi,_ he’d said, and Bokuto and Kenma had just nodded in agreement, so Akaashi had been forced to concede the point. It’s not like they could lie in their own lap to test the theory.

Kenma comes home half an hour later, and Bokuto is actually sleeping by this point, Akaashi’s hand still combing through their hair. Akaashi takes a moment to thank the heavens that Bokuto didn’t wear hair gel today, even if it’s still strange to see him without it. They can’t even imagine how gross their hand would have felt after half an hour of patting. They still would have done it of course, but it would have felt terrible.

Kenma looks at them, frowns, then comprehends.

“Bad day?” Kenma says, and their voice is even quieter than usual in an effort not to wake Bokuto.

“I think so. We’re going to watch a movie later.”

“Okay. What about Moana? I have a pirated copy. It’s good quality.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“I’ll get the TV ready.”

 

By the time Kenma returns, showered and in soft pyjamas and socks, Kuroo has finished cooking and everything is ready.

Akaashi very gently wakes Bokuto up, kissing his cheek and smoothing over his forehead, and when they get a smile instead of a frown and a request for more sleep they know this won’t turn into a storm.

They spend the night eating gyoza and okonomiyaki (which Kenma points out to Kuroo is _not_ a food that should be eaten with hands, how is a pancake something to eat with your hands) and watching Moana, and Bokuto cries three times but it’s the good kind of crying, and Kuroo also tears up, so Akaashi counts it as a success.

 

Akaashi and Kenma do dishes while Bokuto showers and Kuroo tidies up the house, and then Kenma makes them all chamomile tea. They drink it at the table and decompress, talking about their days, and when Bokuto tells them that his co-worker had to put down their dog yesterday it explains everything. But Bokuto is the normal kind of sad, not the kind that escalates, and that’s fine. Kenma tells them that they’ve gotten the internship they were going for, and that they start on Monday, and that distracts all of them for a minute because Kenma deserves it _so much_. Kuroo regales them with how they’ve had to rescue three cats from trees in the last two days (Akaashi doesn’t know _why_ he’s rescuing cats from trees, his job has nothing to do with that), and they end the night laughing.

They get into bed smiling, which is the way Akaashi always wants it, Bokuto in the middle of them all, Kuroo behind him, Kenma behind Kuroo and spooning him in a way that makes them look more like a bizarre kind of backpack, and Akaashi lies down in their spot in front of Bokuto, taking his hand and interlocking their fingers, kissing the tips of them, showing him what he needs to know.

 

The next day is a weekend, and for once none of them have shifts to work. They wake up slowly, in stages, with Kuroo rising first and shuffling off to the kitchen. Akaashi was already awake, but they don’t actually get up until they can smell the coffee that Kuroo’s making, taking a blanket with them and wrapping it around their shoulders, leaving Bokuto and Kenma to curl up together. Akaashi loves seeing them like this in the morning, because Bokuto gravitates to any kind of body heat and Kenma is arguably the most cuddle-able out of all of them, so when it’s just them in bed together they tend to wrap themselves around each other. Once, in his sleep, Bokuto called Kenma ‘teddy bear’, and Akaashi and Kuroo woke them _both_ up with how hard they laughed.

But the call of coffee is arguably stronger than the temptation of just staying in bed and observing, because Akaashi has to make some phone calls today and clean the bathroom, which _definitely_ requires caffeination. It’s also their turn to make breakfast, so they need to get moving before Kuroo makes breakfast anyway. They have a roster, for heaven’s sake, but Kuroo will happily ignore it just to save someone else time and effort. Akaashi keeps telling him that the point is to share the workload, and Kuroo keeps arguing that there’s no point in him not doing something he has the time and energy to do if it helps the people he loves.

The argument always ends with Akaashi not having any response, but they still try their best to follow the roster anyway.

They make it to the kitchen just as Kuroo begins to crack eggs into a pan, and they both stop. Akaashi hangs their blanket over the back of a chair, and they bump Kuroo aside to get to the mushrooms and bacon. They end up cooking breakfast together, side by side, with Kuroo sometimes ending up behind Akaashi, bracketing them with his arms so that he can reach the pepper, and it’s nice. Kuroo is a comforting warmth, and his bedhead makes the cooking entertaining in a way it never is when they’re by themself. Everything about this moment is soft, lit up from inside out, from the light filtering through the window to the washed out red of Kuroo’s t-shirt, and Akaashi wonders how they’d ever ended up with not one partner who understood them, but three, all with their own flaws and strengths, all with their own personalities, and all somehow with the same softness. The same way of looking at Akaashi, like they’re wonderful and important, like they’re necessary and vital, like they’re sunlight and fresh sheets rolled up into one Akaashi shaped package. It’s so unbelievable that if they’d been told, early in their life, that it would happen, they would have scoffed.

And yet here they are, in the sunlight, watching Kuroo’s hands move, wanting to hug them but not daring too because they’re cooking on a hot stove together and that would be a silly idea, waiting for Bokuto and Kenma to wake up so that they can sit together, at their dining table, in their apartment, eating breakfast and laughing over Bokuto’s godawful puns and Kenma’s quiet witticisms, letting silence fall comfortably into the gaps between conversations.

Kuroo notices their introspection and turns down the heat on everything, turning towards them and reaching out, and Akaashi wonders why they didn’t think of that before letting themselves be enveloped in Kuroo’s embrace. Kuroo’s taller than they are and broader as well, a solid weight, and Akaashi leans into the hug, sighing a little and wrapping their arms around his waist, smiling when they feel Kuroo’s chin come to rest on top of their head. They hear Bokuto and Kenma come into the kitchen, their footfalls seeming loud on the cool tiles, and then they’re being hugged from the side and from behind as well, the sleep-warmth of Bokuto’s skin still present, Kenma’s hair brushing their cheek.

Akaashi knows that there’s nowhere they’d rather be than here, in this kitchen, with these people. Letting love in.

 


End file.
